I remember being a child and getting bags full of plastic Cowboys and Indians–similar to green plastic soldiers, but these came in all colors. The Indians all had bows and arrows and feathered headdresses and buckskins. I never thought much about it, but looking back, my sense was that Cowboys and Indians were something out of history. Almost a mythical thing, from hundreds of years ago.

In Boy Scouts, I was a member of the Order of the Arrow. It was an honor to be voted into this group by my troop, and I remember thinking how cool the Native American lore and ceremonies were. I spent several years as a part of our ceremonies team. Eventually, I remember starting to feel uncomfortable, and asking if we weren’t being disrespectful. I was told that our lodge had worked to research historically accurate regalia, and that we’d worked with local tribes to make sure we were being respectful. At the time, I was satisfied. Looking back, I find it interesting that we never actually spoke to or interacted with anyone with native heritage during our time in OA.

My thanks to Jessica McDonald for sharing her story and perspective here. There’s so much here and in the other guest posts that I wish I’d learned as a kid…

In 1889, the US government opened up Indian Territory for white settlers in an event called the Oklahoma Land Rush. Fifty thousand settlers homesteaded on over two million acres of Unassigned Lands. Unassigned, of course, meant appropriated from Native tribes.

A hundred years after the Land Rush, I was a second grader at Carney Elementary School in central Oklahoma. Carney is the kind of town that small doesn’t begin to describe. We didn’t even have a stoplight to brag about. Farms, baseball, and ubiquitous red soil were about the extent of Carney. For the Land Rush celebration, my school did a re-enactment. White kids played settlers, triumphantly surging over the territory line to claim their homestead—a mark of prosperity and hope.

Native kids played dead Indians, lying prone on the ground.

I stood there, unsure of what to do. You see, I’m mixed race—Cherokee and white. I didn’t know where to go. My teacher asked me which side I’d like to be on.

I told her the settlers.

And as an eight-year-old, why wouldn’t I choose the settlers? They were pioneers, exploring and shaping history. Of course I wanted to be part of the victors. Of course I wanted to be white. I knew my family, but when I looked to the culture around me, the media I consumed, all my heroes were white (and male). That was my reference point for greatness.

I’m way past second grade now, but not much as changed. Sci-fi and fantasy—still my favorite genres—seldom offer more than tropes for Native characters. Let’s take a look at James Cameron’s Avatar. Set on a futuristic death planet where everyone is still inexplicably white, the Na’vi are clearly based on indigenous people and presented as the Noble Savage. They are held up as the ideal, “pure”, and quite literally connected to their planet. And yet, it takes a white dreamwalker to save them, because at the end of the day, they are still savages; they do not possess the sophistication to fight the invaders alone.

The weird Western novella Sheep’s Clothing by Elizabeth Einspanier utilizes another trope—the Mystical Indian. Half-Indian character Wolf Cowrie is a gunslinger and half-skinwalker that uses his shamanistic powers to fight vampires. The problem with this is that it reduces Native characters to one (false) aspect: their unequivocal badassed-ness, a nature derived from a history filled with war and mysterious magical abilities.

Westerns used the Drunk Indian and Red Devil tropes, but sci-fi and fantasy utilize stereotypes like the Noble Savage and Mystical Indian in a way that’s arguably worse. These tropes, which simultaneously glorify and erase Native identity, are what’s called positive discrimination, and it’s more insidious precisely because, on its face, it appears flattering. “Look at how honorable and incredible these Natives are! We should strive to be more like them.” Even Star Trek fell into this—in the episode “The Paradise Syndrome,” Kirk, Spock, and McCoy encounter an Earth-like planet… with Native people that are not only blends of completely different tribes, but also primitive and uncivilized, despite living in the twenty-third century. Oh, but these Natives are definitely in harmony with nature, and are romanticized for it.

All this does is add to the chasm of otherness; these tropes don’t seek to understand or accurately portray indigenous people, but only use us as one-dimensional morality points or exciting badasses. Sometimes we get to stretch the limits, and we’re hypersexualized instead (Tiger Lily, Pocahontas, any Indian Princess trope).

The proof is in the costuming. Rarely do we see even “positive” portrayals of Natives in anything other than buckskins, beads, and feathers. We are homogenized to the point that the Plains tribes, with headdresses and horsemanship, are the representatives of all indigenous people. Never mind that Algonquin tribes, who lived in lands dominated by forests, had no use for horses. Never mind that the Salish peoples wore outfits woven from cedar and spruce instead of long, feathered accouterments.

A Cree friend of mine encountered a woman in a critique group who had a Shawnee character that was a horse whisperer. When my friend pushed her on why this character was so connected to horses, the (white) woman responded that it was “in his heritage.” Because being Native clearly means you speak horse.

My brother has been asked if he can ride horses without a saddle and if he smokes peyote. During a particularly asinine line of questioning about whether he lived in “modern” accommodations, he shot back, “Yes, because I live in 2014, not 1865.” His tipi has a mortgage, folks.

I’ve read work by otherwise intelligent, compassionate authors who twist revered Native spirits into European-based demons bent on destruction just to fill a plot point and without any regard for the religious traditions behind those spirits.

I don’t speak to animals. I kill plants just by looking at them, and I don’t feel profoundly connected to the earth. I can’t tell the future and I don’t have some sort of sixth sense about otherworldly things. I sure as hell don’t speak in broken English. Relatable Native characters in sci-fi and fantasy are few in far between. Mostly, I see variations on tropey themes. What’s most painful about this in sci-fi and fantasy is that these are genres about the possible. SF/F is supposed to be the genre where the marginalized are heard. We get worlds where magic is real, where we travel to far-away galaxies, where miracles happen. But not where indigenous peoples can escape their stereotype boxes.

And why not? Sci-fi and fantasy are written by people in today’s world, and what we have today is a major football team using a racial slur as their name. We have white University of North Dakota students proudly proclaiming that they are “Siouxper Drunk”; Injun Joe from Tom Sawyer; Disney’s Pocahontas and Peter Pan; NDNs (played by Italian Americans) crying over pollution.

If you’re thinking, hey, man, it’s just comic books and movies, it’s not like it’s real life—consider the impact this has on young Native and mixed-race kids. Consider why I wanted to be on the white side as a child. I had no reference for modern Natives. I had no role models, no fictional characters to inspire me. All I had were people in revealing buckskins with tomahawks and bows.

Studies show that when Native kids see these harmful stereotypes, their self-esteem suffers, along with their belief in community and their own ability to achieve great things. There’s a danger when you don’t see yourself represented in your culture’s art; there’s an even greater danger when your only representation is fraught with negative messaging and teaches you that you do not belong in this world. You’re a thing of the past, a ghost, a myth.

We’ve got a few reasons to hope the tide is changing. Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock series and Patricia Briggs’s Mercy Thompson series turn the Mystical Indian trope on its head, with nuanced and dynamic Native heroines. Adam Beach, a Saulteaux actor famous for his roles in Smoke Signals, Flags of Our Fathers, and Windtalkers, refuses parts that perpetuate these stereotypes, and his work offers hope for better representation. Lakota rapper Frank Waln creates music that speaks to growing up Native, and advocates for indigenous voices to be heard. Last year, the Senate confirmed Diane Humetewa as the nation’s first Native American woman federal judge.

This year, we even have two sci-fi films that are breaking out of the Native trope mold. Sixth World, written and directed by Navajo woman Nanobah Becker, is based on the Navajo creation story. Legends of the Sky is written and directed by a white man, but is set in the Navajo Nation and features a mostly Native cast.

It’s not nearly enough, but it’s sure as hell better than playing dead on the ground.

Jessica McDonald lives in Denver and is a writer, technophile, gamer, and all-round geek. She serves as the marketing director for SparkFun Electronics in Boulder. She earned her Master’s degree from the University of Denver and holds undergraduate degrees from The Pennsylvania State University, and has worked for everything from political campaigns to game design companies. She has published original research on online user behavior, and writes about marketing, technology, women in STEM, and diversity in media. Her background in the technology and defense industries makes her an insightful critic of gender representation in fiction, film, video games, and comics. Growing up looking white but with Cherokee heritage, she also advocates for representation of people of color and mixed-race characters. Jessica has presented at SXSW Interactive, Shenzhen Maker Faire, American Public Health Association’s national conference, and Pikes Peak Writers Conference. She is the author of the urban fantasy novel BORN TO BE MAGIC and currently is writing a YA novel based on Navajo mythology. Find her on Twitter or on her website.

45 Comments

HollyMarch 16, 2015 @ 9:29 am

Thanks for this great post and for the recommendations toward the end.

jencatMarch 16, 2015 @ 9:51 am

Great essay – and wondered if you had come across Joseph Bruchac’s book Killer of Enemies yet, as it’s a YA dystopian with a protagonist of Apache descent? I do have to admit it’s still sitting on my neverending to-be-read stack, so with all the caveats of mentioning a book I haven’t read yet, I have heard a lot of positive things about it avoiding the usual tropes and integrating Apache culture into the story in an interesting way (and I think the author is of Native descent?).

Jencat– I haven’t read KILLER OF ENEMIES, but now it’s on my list. There are a few novels either recently published or in the works that have really good treatment of Natives, which is totally awesome. Thank you for the recommendation!

A. PendragynMarch 16, 2015 @ 10:38 am

Thanks for writing this.

Most (especially young people) who come into contact with these insidious stereotypes take them as “truth” because there aren’t any other depictions to learn from. And of course if their community tells them the stereotypes are true then anything that disproves them is taken as an outlier or an outright lie. It’s awful. I’m so glad things are starting to change but it’s so. damn. slow.

MichelleMarch 16, 2015 @ 10:47 am

I grew up as a mixed-race Eskimo/white nerd girl in Alaska. All of my heroes were white men too because there were no other options in the 70s. Working my way through the Mercy Thompson novels now and loving them.

lkeke35March 16, 2015 @ 11:09 am

Ditto! And thanks for the rec on Frank Waln. I’m always looking for new and interesting Rap artists.

jencatMarch 16, 2015 @ 11:09 am

A little bit of a segue – it’s slightly SFF as there are some magic realist elements to it – but one indie film I really liked last year was Rhymes for Young Ghouls, set in a First Nation community in the 70s. It’s a fairly harsh subject matter (the Indian Act, boarding school abuses, copious amounts of creative drug dealing) mixed with a darkly comic caper, and a resourceful female teenage protagonist. It had a very limited release but it’s on Netflix now so worth a look (I love how Netflix is making all these little indie films widely available).

You hit the nail on the head with why these portrayals are so problematic. Most white people only know other white people, which means they learn about people different from themselves primarily through media. And when media shows harmful images… well. This is how we get people who think that Natives don’t even exist anymore.

I also haven’t yet read that one, but I’ve read other books by Bruchac. He’s Abenaki and has written quite a bit of sf and fantasy (YA and middle grade) with Native protagonists. What I’ve read has been really fun.

Brenn CMarch 16, 2015 @ 3:16 pm

Hello from a fellow itty bitty town Oklahoman! As a Choctaw/Cherokee/everything else, you could’ve been writing my story too. Only I was blessed to grow up in an area that still has a strong Native population, but even then, I could see the differences between white and other. It’s kept me unsettled my whole life, trying to balance out the two sides in me.

BTW, you might be happy to know that most of the land run celebrations are very low key now, and no longer part of school activities in most towns. Maybe some day they’ll even be taught as the land theft it is? Not holding my breath though.

Pat Munson-SiterMarch 16, 2015 @ 3:51 pm

One of my favorite singers is the late Buddy Red Bow. got to meet him in person and hear him sing live while living in Rapid City, SD while assigned to Ellsworth AFB.

I have sometimes referred to Avatar as “Dances with Wolves in Space”…. nope, don’t have a lot of respect for Wolves, either…. Too many films of that nature manage to imply that it takes a white man to show Indians how to be real Indians… Sigh

SallyMarch 16, 2015 @ 5:22 pm

When I was in high school in Denver (a few years before you had to choose conquering or dying in Oklahoma) one of the gang came home for Christmas break, having gone to the mysterious East, er, Boston for college. Us younger kids all gathered around eager to hear tales of college life and Boston.

The first thing out of her mouth, she said people asked her if she rode a horse to school and still worried about Indian raids (Well, at least the horses and feathers would have been geographically appropriate in eastern Colorado, right?).

Naturally, she thought they were kidding. Of course, they weren’t. Some of them simply refused to believe that we weren’t all still the cowboys and Indians of Jim’s plastic toys. Couldn’t believe we all lived in suburbs, drove cars, rode school buses, and that the Indians went to school with us, dressed the same, and rode on the same yellow buses. Mind you, “Dynasty” was a big hit show during this period, and it showed the skyscrapers of downtown Denver in the credits and a whole bunch of super-rich people doing sophisticated things every week. (Okay, it got a lot wrong, but still. We did have super-rich people doing sophisticated things at the same time as I was riding my bike to 7-11 for candy and comic books, free of any fear of scalping.)

So I can see how downright weird it must have been for you, even if I can’t feel your pain. I lived in a 99% white suburb but we did learn about different behaviors of different nations, even if in broad terms like Plains, Northwest, Iroquois and other Eastern. And the local history, including calling a massacre of Indians by whites what it was — the Sand Creek massacre.

Please know that many of us entirely white folk rolled our eyes at “Avatar” just as much. Ditto Johnny Depp’s bird hat. The Native Americans I’ve known have all been better with pickup trucks than with horses. The only mystic information I ever got from a Chiricahua Apache woman was her opinion of my hair color and what shade of fingernail polish I should consider, for she was a beautician and I am clueless about that stuff.

So… some of us are trying. Please let us know what more we can do. Thanks especially for the movie recommendations. (I’ll always see anything with Adam Beach because, hello!)

AvilynMarch 16, 2015 @ 5:26 pm

Thank you for this! There’s definitely an education issue in this country; history is very much “white”washed. When we learned about the settlers and the roots of the country, the genocide and theft from Native peoples was very much NOT discussed at all (at least when I was in school 20 yrs ago; I doubt it’s gotten any better). Pretty much all we were taught is that “Indians helped the Settlers survive the first winter and showed them how to grow maize and that’s why we have Thanksgiving”. So most of what I “learned” came from TV, movies, and books, and as you point out, most of those are sadly inaccurate at best, and downright harmful in most cases.

A. PendragynMarch 16, 2015 @ 10:11 pm

Or that the only ones are drunk and violent. Saw it way too much in North Dakota when I lived there. And every slightly brown person was assumed to be Mexican (no other Central or South American countries exist apparently) and either a thief or drug dealer or both. And this was from 20-somethings in college! Anyone who didn’t see things that way generally moved very far away, leaving very few willing or able to speak up against that kind of mentality.

It’s come to the point that if there aren’t more positive representations in the media, then most of these very homogenized communities will *never* see or hear anything but the bad about everyone not like themselves. But I guess there are people who prefer it that way. (SIGH)

Lkeke35March 16, 2015 @ 11:19 pm

If you’re a fan of Jason Momoa,cwho is of Native Hawaiian descent, then check out Road to Paloma. He also has a TV show which he directs and stars in, on Sundance, called Red Road, which I enjoy. It’s a modern crime/noir , set on a reservation, with a Native cast. He was also just cast as Aquaman, which really makes me want to go see that Justice League movie, no matter how awful it might be.

Lenora RoseMarch 16, 2015 @ 11:49 pm

Adam Beach is still also doing good works in his home neighbourhood in Winnipeg, a city that (Justifiably) got blasted for being one of the most racist (against First Nations people in particular) in Canada by one of our major magazines.

I’ve noted (as a white woman) that racism against First Nations comes in three forms: in places where they’re a visible presence, like here, it’s very similar to racism against black African Americans. In places they aren’t visible, they’re assumed to all have died off long ago in history. In places they try to raise some consciousness they’re still around but where they aren’t a strong presence, you get noble savage tropes.

Sleepy Hollow, a show that had non-stereotyped black women as two of its three most important leads in its first season, still managed one episode combining the worst of all of the above; first it’s assumed that most of the local people are dead, then they find ONE, and he runs a used car lot, but is ALSO a noble savage / magical Shaman. And it gets worse.

I’ve found that a number of First Nations writers who could be published as mainstream Literature or as fantasy tend to get published as “Native Literature” instead, which tends to limit the audience. But I can rec some awesome ones: Thomas King (“Green Grass, Running Water” is still my favourite of his, and among my favourites of all time, not least for its deliberate corkscrewing and mocking of European mythology the way white writers tend to corkscrew and misinterpret First Nations mythology. it’s also the easiest to find as it got moved to full-out “literature”.) Drew Hayden Taylor (The Night Wanderer and Motorcycles and Sweetgrass both feature supernatural figures – one from European folklore and one Anishinaabe – causing chaos in an Anishinaabe Rez; the former is intended for teens, the latter is more adult but could be read by YA). Tomson Highway’s novel “Kiss of the Fur Queen” doesn’t have quite as much to appeal to fantasy readers in particular as the other two (IE, he uses less of his own culture’s mythology) but is still excellent reading.

I only read the first Mercy Thompson book so far, and I liked very much.

And on the other side, for writers, there is a book called “So you Want to Write about American Indians?” by Devon Abbott Mihesuah, a Choctaw. It’s extremely 101-level information, but if you’re not sure you’re even at 101-level, it’s a place to start.

I’m half-ish Shoshone. The other half of my family immigrated from the Azores and most everyone spoke Portuguese and English while I was growing up. So I have this really weird mixed heritage /cultural thing going on.

I spoke about this before on the Codex Writing group (while we were discussing cultural appropriation) and how I have a lot of trouble identifying as Native American (since I’m not 100%) although my dad (who is the one with NA heritage) worked for the local reservation and we have participated in a lot of cultural events in our area. However, I grew up no where near where the official Shoshone reservations are. I’ve never been there and know only a small amount about that particular tribe (except that they were/we were one of the few tribes that actually tamed horses. Most of the other tribes had domesticated horses introduced to them by European explorers. So the funny bit you have about that guy saying the Shawnee horse whisperer is even more funny to me…although I don’t know maybe Shawnee were horse people, too?). Anyway, I’ve been taught archery and how to catch fish without a pole, along with other interesting things. I went to school in an area where there were three tribes, but a lot of NA kids from all sorts of tribes (not necessary the local ones). Our school spent a lot of time teacher NA history and we had cultural events that were, yes, taught and sponsored by actual tribe members. We did a lot of field trips to important Native sites. The biggest thing I always see is people advocating for people who live on reservations (which is AWESOME, don’t get me wrong), but as a school counselor I worked at a Native American school and the majority of people who identify as mostly Native American DO NOT live on the reservations.

Anyway, I always feel very uncomfortable talking about my cultural history, because of a variety of reasons, one being I don’t like the effect it has: like I’m talking for all NA people when I’m not 100% and didn’t grow up ON a reservation and a full member of a tribe. I guess being half and half (and a lot of other tiny things mixed in) I’m not allowed to play in either cultural playground. And that by default makes me….what?

As a writer, too, I tend to make my main characters mixed as well. I especially love Patricia Briggs’ series (both of them, Mercy Thompson and the Alpha Omega one) because Mercy is half as well and although she’s a shapeshifter, she doesn’t follow usual stereotypes. She’s not all seeing and she doesn’t know much about NA customs and she doesn’t “speak to the Earth”…which I think is what makes most NA kids I’ve seen in my counseling situations depressed/angry. That they’re expected to be respectful of the Earth and having some sort of sixth sense for Shamanism, or be really awesome with animals. It’s a lot to live up to and if you’re not good at it, then you’re a crappy Native or something. No cultural identity marks in yourself to be proud of = feeling you’re not living up to world’s expectations of you.

I also identify with Mercy because she was brought up by a “tribe” of werewolves (when she is a skin walker, which is different), which is a lot like me being brought up around a tribe that is not my own in real life. It was the first time I saw myself in a book.

Thank you for your interesting essay. It was nice to hear from another mixed heritage person, so it made me more comfortable speaking out. Sometimes being a little of both I feel that I should sit back and be quiet to give other people who can’t pass for white space to talk (although I do a mediocre job at passing sometimes since most people think I’m lightish skinned Latino/Mexican, Italian, or Middle Eastern–bonus! my maiden name is on the Al Qaeda watch list, so I got detained in airports a lot–And my kids have blond hair and blue eyes, so I get a lot of adoption questions. Really, this is still privileged compared to what mixed race people go though, so I often feel like a jerk talking about it).

Jeanne (Miami-Peoria)March 17, 2015 @ 3:04 am

Thanks for your post, and to Jim for the platform. Lots still to be done in SFF for native portrayals, not least NDNs riding over the hill to save the white man. 🙂 I’d like to see more part-bloods, as so many of us walk that tricky road. What is the blend? IME, it’s a weird thing, and not usually delineated. Nobody said, “Now this is Ind’in Way,” just “This is how the world works.” I had to figure it out by tripping over cultural curbs at weird points. The old idea of world-walking applies, if not in the traditional sense, quite.

I’ll try to keep this as concise as I can, but I want to touch three bases:

First, about me: I’m not Native, but I’ve been interested in Native cultures pretty much all my life. My father’s father spent a lot of his life interacting with Native populations, mostly in the Columbia Gorge and Plateau regions of the Pacific Northwest, in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries — initially on a personal level, and eventually while wearing a number of different professional and semi-scholarly hats. He collected stories, learned some of the local languages, and published one of the first books of Native folklore from the region in the 1930s. Regrettably, he died before I was born, but my family has retained a strong interest in the Northwest peoples ever since, and some of my own fiction extrapolates from our family’s experiences and the material my grandfather collected. My own first-hand encounters with living Native cultures have been very limited; what I have is what I would call a decent reading knowledge — not expertise, except perhaps by comparison to most of the non-Native population — of a particular regional strata of Native folklore, with scattershot side-excursions into particular parts of regional history and other parts of the mythological forest, plus a wealth of my grandfather’s and father’s stories carefully preserved and passed down.

Second: As a general observation, I’m a little surprised that the SF community hasn’t done more exploration of white/Native interactions than it has, because it seems clear to me that the current state of affairs in North America is nothing if not the result of a whole series of exceedingly messy “first contact” stories, and that’s one of SF’s most fascinating subgenres. The one comment I’d make about the real-world historical record is simply this: as a class, the Native tribes whose first-contact scenarios centered primarily on trade ended up with a different set of problems from those which began with military conflict. (This is not to say that the traders came off better.) And it seems to me that approaching the issues from an SFnal tack might allow for less judgmental — and thus perhaps more nuanced — examinations of how and why things went south.

Third: Given that you mention Cherokee heritage, I’d be very curious to know whether you’ve read any of the series of novels by Tom Deitz beginning with Windmaster’s Bane originally published in the 1980s and 1990s — particularly the subset of the series that featured Cherokee folklore and mythic elements, sometimes on its own and sometimes side by side with the series’ primary grounding in Celtic mythology. It was my own sense at the time both that Deitz had done his homework unusually well and that he’d done a good job of shaping his Cherokee protagonist (one Calvin McIntosh). The series dropped out of print after Deitz’s passing in 2009, but is now in the process of being reissued by a new publisher, and it’s one I’ve recommended ever since it originally appeared.

I totally understand, and it’s good to know things are changing in OK. I left when my family moved away when I was 8, and haven’t lived there since, but some of the recent things I’ve seen–like banning AP History–makes me…concerned.

People are so weird with their perceptions of other areas. A good friend of mine is a (white) Alaskan, and she gets similar nuttiness–people asking if she lived in an igloo, if she rode a sled to school. I also dated a (white) Australian for a while, and people would ask him dumb stuff too. Of course, he played the game of, “What kind of insanity will Americans believe” and just told them whopper after whopper to see how long it took for them to realize he was mocking them, lol.

Thank you for trying! It’s really valued. 🙂 As for what more you can do: keep being an ally. Keep correcting ignorance (in the literal definition) when you see it. Help us advocate for things that matter–the Keystone XL Pipeline is a good example. It’s charted to run right through Native lands, destroying sacred sites and, according to Keystone’s own proposal, polluting water sources that are used by Native people. Call out problematic things–like Johnny Depp’s portrayal–when you see it and educate other white people. Thank you for your support, and hell yes about Adam Beach! (The Cree friend mentioned in my essay claims he’s her husband and just doesn’t know it yet, lol.)

When I was 10 and Disney’s POCAHONTUS had just come out, my mom protested it at the movie theater in town and refused to let me see it. Being 10, I was just really embarrassed and didn’t understand why. She tried to explain that it was harmful for people to be given this view of Pocahontus, and I was like, “But Mom, it’s just a movie.” Later, I realized the problem is exactly what you said–even though it’s “just a movie” or “just a book”, media shapes our expectations and perceptions of reality. See something enough times, and it becomes truth, even if it’s a lie. Couple that with an incredibly sanitized telling of American history, and entire Native cultures get erased. :/

I so, so understand. It has been a long process for me to be comfortable identifying myself as mixed race. Even writing this essay, I had some weird sense of fear–like people were going to be like YOU’RE NOT A REAL NDN or something. That’s a fear born from people having told me similar stuff in the past. “Well, you’re not /really/ Indian. You’re white.” Defining me from the outside in.

You’re absolutely right that vast majority of Natives don’t live on reservations. Reservations have a lot of problems–the grinding poverty being a major one–but it doesn’t make you less “real” that you didn’t live on one. Being mixed of anything is hard. I think a lot of people don’t know how to handle stuff that isn’t Option A or Option B–like in the great Venn diagram of humanity, we don’t know how to deal with the overlap. I don’t want to speak for all Natives, and I definitely cannot speak, from personal experience, about living on reservations or what it’s like to be visually not-white. But we can still join the conversation without speaking over our full-blooded cousins. Our perspectives as kids of two cultures matter too, and I’m glad that this essay let you feel a little more comfortable discussing it. Thank you so much for sharing your story! 🙂

Brenn CMarch 18, 2015 @ 1:25 am

Yeah, there’s still a lot to be desired, from primary to secondary and even doctorate education here in our own histories. What’s coming out of OU is just as ridiculous as the AP debacle. And I don’t mean just the fraternity idiocy. I’ve had friends transfer out of OU’s Native tract because it’s a dead end as far as research and publication. Arizona and New Mexico Universities are decades ahead in all regards. It’s why I take every little step forward with anticipation.

I remember an article from the Atlanta paper 20 years ago that said the tourist bureau gets questions like “I know it’s the South, but the hotel will have indoor plumbing, right?”

Pat Munson-SiterMarch 18, 2015 @ 3:27 pm

I suspect that those who are mix-race sometimes have more problems with self identity (and how outsiders treat you) than full blood. There is a reason why Cher’s “Half Breed” struck a chord in so many people.

I also wanted to point out Andre Norton’s “Beastmaster” SF series as one with an Amerind primary character; it’s been so long since I read it I don’t remember if he was mixed or ful blood, but from what I remember she avoided most of the more common tropes for Amerind characters. Please ignore the TV series that was supposedly ‘based on’ the books, but in point of fact had almost nothing in common with the books…

That is so true. Defining from the outside in is a problem. I had several friends who were Black in college. Their skin was pretty white. As “white” as mine, but they had a Black parent. A lot of people kept correcting them (usually when talking about the hardships about being mixed race or being Black, other people would say “Yeah, but you don’t, right? You’re not, you know, the same as someone who is actually Black”)…some people get really confused about genetics sometimes. And I just want to cringe for them. I always felt strongly to never argue a persons experience or their feelings. Those are things we don’t get to debate on (maybe it’s my counseling degree at work there) yet people feel they need to correct people. I found I got corrected more after I got married and had a graduates degree. People think that skipping up in social class from poverty to middle class somehow erases where I’ve been.

And thank you again for being brave and taking the chance while writing this essay. It is very difficult to step forward as someone who is mixed race. It does open up a possibility of trolls and other people who just don’t get it.

Felicia DaleMarch 20, 2015 @ 9:19 pm

Thanks for this. I learned a ton.

celliMarch 24, 2015 @ 2:55 pm

This is great, thank you! I grew up in a hotbed of racism (western SD, where you pour beer on and scream at Lakota kids at a hockey game and you get a slap on the wrist) and am still trying to detach from some of the things I was taught as a kid. I’m looking forward to reading all these recs.

I LOVE what you said about the history of North America (…and, really the entire Global South) being one long series of first-contact stories. You’re absolutely right. I think Westerners in general, though, are really uncomfortable discussing colonialism and its legacy, so it doesn’t surprise me that few white American authors have taken this on. Besides the fact that you’d have to dive into the not commonly taught history of the US to really get the meat of it. >.>

I have not read anything by Tom Deitz, but now I’m officially intrigued, and will check it out! Thank you!

I haven’t seen any of those, although I love cop procedurals, but I know that Canada at least seems a bit better about First Nations representation on TV. The Cree friend I mentioned in the post is Canadian, and we talk a lot about that topic. 🙂

I’d agree with you (although being full-blood has its own struggles–I’m at least white passing, so I don’t deal with the upfront racism that full-blood Natives do.) You sort of feel like you don’t belong anywhere; not NDN enough for the NDNs, and not privileged enough for the whites. Although, perhaps surprisingly, I’ve never had another Native be like YOU’RE A FAKE NDN or give me grief over my racial identity–it’s always been from white people. I’m not sure what that says, but it’s probably worth some exploring, haha. But that idea of being in two worlds, it’s a running theme in my own writing. Maybe it’s catharsis, but I’m also deeply interested in this idea of /mixed/, and how that shapes perceptions and others’ reactions.

Very interesting post. It’s disturbing to think how easy it is to fall back on stereotypes and incomplete (and inaccurate) knowledge of different peoples. This series is making me think of my own assumptions and your post in particular has made me question the portrayals I’ve seen of different native groups. I think people need to start educating themselves more, but learning that you need to learn more – and more accurate information – comes first, so thank you for this.

Along those lines, I recently played a video game that has great representation of an Inupiat legend. It’s called “Never Alone” and was made in co-operation with Inupiat people. Achievements in the game unlock short videos that talk about their customs. It was a great way to learn more – and respectful of both the people and their traditions. I’d love to see more projects like this – that combine an enjoyable activity with learning accurate information.

[…] a danger when you don’t see yourself represented in your culture’s art; there’s an even greater danger when your only representation is fraught with negative messaging and teaches you…. You’re a thing of the past, a ghost, a […]